A then 13-year-old ringette player says her female assistant coach, then 22, initiated a sexual relationship with her, while admitting it was illegal and could put her in jail.

The girl, now 15, says the affair with Kelsey Joy Hepburn began in December 2010 with text messages back and forth. She testified Hepburn later started kissing and touching her.

It ended March 22, 2011, in the player’s basement when her mother came home and, as Crown prosecutor Vicki Faulkner told the jury in her opening statement, caught Hepburn “with her pants down.”

Faulkner says the relationship is illegal, as a 13-year-old cannot consent to any sexual conduct. Hepburn is on trial for sexual interference and invitation to sexual touching.

The girl said Hepburn expressed concerns about their relationship, first telling her in a text message on Jan. 1, 2011, and later in person that she had to be careful: “If we ever get caught, I’m going to jail.”

In a March 5, 2011, text message, Hepburn wrote that if the girl was 18, it would be normal. “If not, I’m a predator,” said the coach.

“I’m sorry, I love you and I feel horrible,” Hepburn wrote. “I love you and at the same time, I’m a criminal.”

The accused also told her she would give up coaching in order to be with her.

The girl said she told Hepburn at times she was uncomfortable and didn’t know what to think of Hepburn’s actions, and at other times “was kind of shocked and didn’t know” what to do.

“She asked me how I felt about it and I told her I liked it,” she told Faulkner.

The girl said the sexual contact occurred in several places, including in the coach’s car before a Roughnecks game, at a ringette tournament in Edmonton and in a Saddledome bathroom stall during the game. She said the coach would also phone her late at night, after her parents were asleep.

She said Hepburn also gave her a promise ring during the season, telling her that “she would always love me and never leave me.”

“I didn’t totally know why she was giving it to me . . . I took it and wore it.”

On the day they got caught, she told the prosecutor, Hepburn had come over with pictures she was going to download onto the girl’s computer. When they couldn’t get them to work on an upstairs computer, they went down to the basement and were surprised when the girl’s mother came home.

She said her mother told Hepburn to go upstairs, then told her to leave.

Hepburn, she said, was trying to tell her mother that nothing had happened.

The girl said she was scared and didn’t know what was going to happen when her mother caught them. She said she no longer has anything to do with Hepburn and has had no contact, with the exception of one phone call a month or two later, after March 22, 2011.

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